USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 40
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The latest church to be established, dating from 1888, is the Swedish Evan- gelical Lutheran Tabor, of which Rev. Joseph D. Danielson is pastor.
For its 1,600 children of school age Branford has a complete and modern equipment. The plant consists of a well equipped Iligh school, seven graded schools and four schools in the outlying districts which, though of the country type, are well managed and taught. The superintendent of schools, who is also principal of the High school, is Herman S. Lovejoy. In the High school he has a force of seven teachers. In Center district graded school there are eight rooms, at the Stony Creek school six, at the Canoe Brook school three, and at Harbor Street, Short Beach, Indian Neck and Saltonstall two rooms each. The district schools are Mill Plain, Damascus, Paved Street and Bushy Plain.
The board of citizens who direct this school equipment consists of John
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A MODERN HISTORY OF NEW HAVEN
W. Cunningham, chairman; John Van Wie, O. C. Kelsey, J. Edwin Brainerd, II. R. Allsworth, T. G. Fisher, W. C. Iligley, E. A. Kraus, and Charles Reynolds.
There was born on a humble farm just outside of the center of Branford, in 1793, a descendant in the fifth generation from that William Blackstone who was the first settler of Boston. On that same Branford farm four generations of Blackstones before John Blackstone had lived, done their work and given substance to the town. Ile lived there all his life, and died in Branford in 1886, at the ripe age of ninety-three. He had a son, Timothy B. Blackstone, who chose a life work that took him outside the okl town where his ancestors had lived so long. At eighteen he began as a rodman in the engineering depart- ment of the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad. By the application of that talent for industry and hard work which he had inherited he rose to assistant engineer in construction, to division engineer in constrnetion on the Illinois Central, to chief engineer on the Joliet & Chieago, then to president of that road. At the age of thirty-five he was made president of the Chicago & Alton, and held that position for thirty-five years. Then, at seventy, he retired to a well earned leisure. It is the brief life story of one of Branford's most distinguished sons.
That career of success is marked for Branford in a manner that makes every dweller in the town pridefully bless the name of Blackstone. On an eminenee in the center of the town stands one of the finest library buildings in Connecticut, one of the most beautiful to be found ontside of the largest cities of the country. It is a Grecian temple of the purest beauty, carved from Ten- nessee marble. Without, the architect, Solon S. Beeman of Chicago, has repro- duced in classie fidelity the true lines of Ionian art as shown in the Erechtheum of Athens in the days of the glory that was Greece. Within, in marble of vary- ing tints, are wall and pier and arch and entablature, all in rich keeping with the dignity of the building. It is an edifice which has made Branford the praise of lovers of beauty and art the eountry over, and can never cease to exert its silent influence for the betterment of all who dwell within the town. It houses a well chosen library of 34,888 books.
So did Timothy B. Blackstone, prominent, successful and wealthy man. pay peerless tribute to the memory of the father whose simple greatness made his success possible. There have been many memorials, but few that so gracefully emphasize hidden character. The James Blackstone Memorial Library was com- pleted in 1896, at an estimated cost of $300,000, and Mr. Blackstone provided $300,000 more for its endowment. It is held by the James Blackstone Memorial Library Association, Incorporated, of which the original incorporators were Thorwald F. Hammer, Edward F. Jones, Dr. Charles W. Gaylord, Edmund Zacher, William Regan and Henry W. Hubbard. The trustees now are Dr. Gaylord, president ; Edwin R. Kelsey, secretary ; Alfred E. Hammer, treasurer; Mr. Zacher, Mr. Hubbard and Andrew Keogh, M. A., librarian of Yale Univer- sity. The present Blackstone librarian is Charles N. Baxter.
Two banks serve the business machinery and the thrift of Branford. The
THE JAMES BLACKSTONE MEMORIAL LIBRARY, BRANFORD Erected by Timothy B. Blackstone of Chicago, Illinois, as a Memorial to His Father.
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older of them is the Branford Savings, which is known for its sound and con- servative management, and has three quarters of a million dollars in deposits. Its president is Charles Hoadley, and its treasurer Wallace H. Foote. The Branford Trust Company, of which Richard Bradley is president, llenry F. Jourdan vice president and William R. Foote treasurer, has a capital of $25,000 and surplus of $14,000.
Branford the borough was incorporated in 1893. It provides a strong cen- tral government, and has been managed largely as a business institution. Its chief executive in 1917 was Valdemar T. Hammer. The town officers the same year were: Selectmen, Louis A. Fisk, John T. Sliney and J. Edwin Brainerd : town clerk, Charles A. lloadley; judge of town court, Edwin R. Kelsey ; clerk and prosecutor of the same, John Eades and Earle A. Barker. The borough has an efficient fire department of which Wilson Thompson is chief, consisting of two hose companies, a hook and ladder company and a chemical engine.
The town has developed in the years a sufficient array of organizations and fraternities. Its twenty-five include a Masonie lodge, two lodges and an encamp- ment of the orders of the Odd Fellows, a division of the Ancient Order of Hiber- nians, a council of the Knights of Columbus, two lodges of the Knights of Pythias, two lodges of the New England Order of Protection, a lodge of the Ancient Order of United Workmen and two camps of the Modern Woodmen of the World. There are two temperance societies, the Branford Agricultural Society, the M. 1. F. Benefit Association, Mason Rogers Post, G. A. R., and two social clubs, the Branford Home Club and the Saltonstall Club.
Branford's handsome Soldiers' monument, erected on the green in 1885. was provided through the efforts of Mason Rogers Post of the Grand Army of the Republic, which raised a fund of $5,000 for the purpose. It memorializes the soldiers who have fought for Branford in former wars, but there is a larger company serving the old town now. Branford had for several decades before the beginning of this war been the headquarters of a battery of the state's artil- lery, and this company went out with the others under Captain Carroll C. Hineks.
Branford's industries, says the statistician, are agriculture and the manufac- ture of malleable iron goods. When a single concern employs upward of a thousand men in a community of some 7,000 people, that eovers a large part of the ground. Branford settlers were farmers at the start, but some of them began to dabble in iron as early as 1655. They got the idea from the iron they found in the hills on the shore of Saltonstall, the noble lake on whose heights Governor Gurdon Saltonstall had his home in the colonial days. The iron miners, however, gave the name Furnace Pond to what had before that been Great Pond.
But that was only an incident. An infinitesimal part of the tremendous weight of iron which Branford has used lias ever been mined in the town. Gone along with the iron mines are most of the primitive mills that used to be on Beaver Brook. The Branford Loek Works, an industry established in 1809,
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which fifty years later was the Squire & Parsons Manufacturing Company, has also disappeared. F. A. Holcomb, who later was a successful carriage manufac- turer in New Haven, began his industry in Branford in the 'sixties. Ten years later his factory was used for a while to make safes, but those also are of the past. So is the shipbuilding yard that used to be at Page's Point. Bran- ford's coasting trade is a memory, like the days when it was an important port of entry, and home port for deep sca sailors. Practically all of Branford's oysters are now raised at the Stony Creek side of the town.
So it comes about that though Branford today does more manufacturing than ever before in its history, it is confined to two concerns. The beginning of the Malleable Iron Fittings Company was at Page's Point in 1855, when William Il. Perry, William S. Kirkham, John and Samuel O. Plant, William Blackstone, Gurdon Bradley, David Beach and William Wadsworth estab- lished a factory for the production of malleable iron. It was Rogers & Had- ley afterward, but in 1864 the present corporation took hold, the far famed "M. I. F. Co." being formed. At that time the officers were: President, J. J. Walworth; secretary and treasurer, E. C. Hammer; manager at Branford, T. F. Hammer ; general superintendent, R. E. ITammer.
Since then the business has developed enormously in size and even more in variety. In the heart of Branford, where railroad communication is most con- venient, has been created a model of American manufacturing efficiency. It has made the significant name of Hammer the slogan of Branford. Without, the factory is an adornment to Branford. Within, it is a dynamo of produc- tion, a magical transformer of the labor of the town into an almost endless variety of useful "fittings" of malleable iron. It is a technical array of product, but the initiated reckon by signs they can understand that it is mighty excel- lent. The firm employs in all its departments considerably in excess of 1,000 people, and the business is rapidly growing.
The company is at present capitalized at $125,000, and its officers are : President, A. C. Walworth ; secretary, J. J. Niehols; treasurer and general man- ager, Alfred E. Hammer ; superintendent of pipe fittings, Valdemar T. Hammer.
Branford's other going manufacturing concern is the Atlantic Wire Com- pany, maker of iron and steel wire. It was established in Branford in 1906 with a capital of $25,000, and employs between fifty and 100 men. Its officers are W. E. Ilitcheock, president and treasurer; M. F. Hope, secretary.
In strange contrast, this hive of industry is, for a part of the year, also the abode of the supremest leisure. Branford's shore, all the way from Short Beach to Little Harbor, is a delight to the lover of the sea. It has a coast of infinite variety, indented with creeks and bays, fringed with romantic and rocky islands, a never failing mine of joy and treasure. As far back as 1852 wayfarers from far found it, and now dwellers in Branford and New Haven and the four corners of the earth come to seek its summer paradise. Short Beach, Double Beach. Branford Point, Indian Neck and Pine Orchard are a few of
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THE MALLEABLE IRON FITTINGS COMPANY, BRANFORD
CHAPTER XXXVI
STONY CREEK
THIE UNIQUE SHORE RESORT, THE CENTER OF THE QUARRY INDUSTRY, THE OYSTER -
PRODUCING VILLAGE WIIICH IS A PART OF THE TOWN OF BRANFORD
For many years the white settlers of Branford dwelt in harmony with the Indian neighbors from whom the land had been aequired, and it may be that one of the reasons for the harmony was a tacit division of the land. The early settlers gravitated to some stream. The whites took the mouth of that river that rises in the heights of Totoket, and most of their habitations, for many years after the settlement, were along the New Ilaven side of it, near its mouth. To their Indian allies they left another and smaller stream-the "stony ereek" that enters the Sound near what is now the southeastern boundary of Bran- ford. Verily it was a stony creek. Born of one branch in the heights of western Guilford, of another in the meadows of southeastern Branford, it flowed over a rocky bed to the sea. Around it for two miles up from its mouth are ledges of what looked to the farmer like valueless roek, but its bed and the shores east and west of where it meets the Sound were and are a treasure ground of sea food. Fish, but more especially elams and oysters, had, to judge from the shell-piles, abounded there for centuries before the white man first viewed the land.
Long before that it seems to have been the happy hunting ground of the Indian. All the produets of that chase by which he lived were there in profu- sion. Wild fowl were in its sedgy creeks and inlets and on its meadows. Deer and the smaller animals were found there and nearby. His eye for nature's beauties was not as ours, but that romantie group of islands which lies just off the coast did not fail to appeal to him, and around their shores, in his hunt- ing trips, he may frequently have ventured in his light eanoe.
The rocky stream and what lies near it, the supplies of food and those same "Thimble Islands," make the modern Stony Creek. For all Stony Creek is divided, like Caesar's Gaul, into three parts, its quarries, its oyster business and its summer shore and hotel business. Of the features that make these, prob- ably the islands first attraeted attention. There are about twenty-five of "the Thimbles," counting the islands to which a house might cling, and they are old in story and tradition. The attention of the earliest settlers of Branford was drawn to them from the tale that Captain Kidd, who seurried through the
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Sound more or less in the first half century of Branford's existence, had buried some of his ill-gotten gains on the island which afterward came to be called "Money Island." Some of the first settlers handed down the story that they had seen him there; some had even talked with him. The legend that he buried any treasure in the vicinity is little eredited now; it is entirely possible that the pirate may have stoppd one or more times for shelter or supplies in some of the numerous island harbors.
But there are the islands, and they have treasures exceeding any of which Kidd ever dreamed. They have a beauty of natural scenery, a romance of variety, a fascination of sun and storm and sea of many moods, that never eease to draw and hold, and in these days jaded humans come from far for their restoration and rest. Long years ago, as a pioneer, Captain William O'Brien bought Pot Island, and erected a house there. Now there is hardly an island big enough to give foundation to a dwelling that has not one or more of summer habitations, while some of them have been transformed by wealth and art into summer fairylands. Their path of the sea is a free highway. and the boatman or the canoeist may find increasing joy in eruising about their labyrinth. They are largely responsible for a company of pilgrims as large or sometimes larger than the credited population of Stony Creek, that annually visits cottages or hotels or boarding places on Stony Creek shore or in the village.
The chief of these hotels is at Indian Point, the Indian Point House, now owned by Mrs. Martha C. Maynard and conducted by her daughter, Mrs. Charles Madiera, and her husband. The Three Elms House, just inshore from this, is owned by Mrs. Maynard, and was formerly under the same management. In the village are the Brainard House, a summer hotel, and the Bay View Inn, an all-the-year house. At Flying Point there is the Flying Point Ilotel, and at Money Island the Harbor View and Money Island hotels.
The story of Stony Creek's quarry industry, which makes the abiding sub- stance of the village, is a story of the settlement itself. As a portion of the Branford agricultural community-there is some good farm land to the north- west of the village-it began very early. There is pretty definite record of the settlement there, as a pioneer in 1671, of Francis Norton. There were Nortons among the original settlers from New Haven, and the presumption is that he came from that way. But William Leete, who appeared to the eastward of him only two years later, undoubtedly came from Guilford. In the company of others who came soon after are the names of Richard Butler, farmer, Abraham and William Hoadley, Frisbie, Barker, Palmer, Howd, Rogers and Roekwell.
So they spread all over the southeastern part of the town, and increased. By 1788 there were so many that Stony Creek, as it seems to have been called almost from the first, was made a school district. Not all of the settlers were farmers ; some were fishermen. Still others were sailors, some of them on deep waters. Stony Creek shared with Branford, for a good part of the nineteenth century, the prosperity and distinction of a Sound coasting port.
No doubt the early settlers had some hazy notion that Stony Creek's stones
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were valuable, but it was not adequate. They lived on through the eighteenth and nearly half of the nineteenth centuries mostly by farming and fishing, hav- ing little conception of the broader commercial possibilities that lay in their land and off their shore. For oystering was in those days no more than a local industry, if it was any industry at all. The coming of the Shore Line railroad, about 1850, was the beginning of Stony Creek's awakening. Before this, no doubt, the people had realized something of the value of the stone that was in their ledges, but there was no market for it at hand, and no means of transport- ing it to far markets. The railroad changed all that, and the outsiders who came with it were not long in discovering the quarry possibilities of the place. They did not for some time, however, realize the high quality or rare value of Stony Creek's peculiar granite deposits.
There were, soon after 1850, some operations for the quarrying of the stone. Most important was that of B. G. Green, who in 1858 developed a quarry and operated it for about fifteen years, employing at one time as many as fifty men. But the first operation on a large scale seems to have been that of John Beattie. Stony Creek was not to have the credit of his work, however. He commenced quarrying at the far eastern corner of the village in 1870, and finding a good quality of stone, did an extensive business. But that distriet was set off to Leete's Island in Guilford in 1882, and all of the extensive Beattie work has gone for a Guilford industry.
In 1875 the first strictly local operation was commeneed on the east side of the town, about a mile north of the railroad. A superior vein of stone was discovered, which seems to have been largely responsible for making widely famous the Stony ('reek prodnet. A few years later granite from this quarry was used in a part of the construction of the capitol buildings at Hartford and at Albany, New York. A system of spur tracks was laid from this plant down to the railroad. The necessity for this was largely obviated when in 1893 the course of the railroad through Stony Creek was moved farther northward.
The quarry business still conducted under their name was established in 1888 by the Norcross Brothers of Worcester. Here a superior product was found, and a corporation with a quarter of a million dollars of capital now em- ploys several hundred men in the getting out of finished stone. It is red granite of an especially beautiful variety which is produced at this quarry.
The following year a concern known as the Branford Granite Company, but said to have been financed largely by Brooklyn capital, opened a quarry on the west side of the creek. It employed at one time from 100 to 150 men, but this business has been absorbed by the two quarry companies which survive.
The other of these besides Noreross Brothers is the Stony Creek Red Granite Company, organized by Samuel Babcock of Middletown. It has found abun- dance of a high class granite, and does a prosperous business. There was for- merly still another quarry industry, which flourished for a time, the Totoket Granite Company, which found a handsome grade of pink granite.
But though the number of individual concerns has diminished, Stony Creek's
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quarry industry was never so prosperous as now, and every year finds the supe- rior quality and workmanship of its product more widely known. The stone taken out here is of brilliant beauty, and mueh of it takes a high polish. It has been in high favor especially for monumental purposes where unusual attrac- tiveness is desired, while for building purposes the gray and white granite of Stony Creek goes, in quantities of hundreds of tons, all over the country.
Even more famous are Stony Creek oysters. Long ago the oyster industry eeased to be a simple matter of raking up oysters from the sea bed, culling them and placing them on the market. But that Stony Creek has kept np with the times and the science of growing oysters the reputation of the bivalves bearing the name of the village proves. They go all over the country, and com- mand the high priees of the product that has fame. The largest grower and dealer is the Stony Creek Oyster Company, with a capital of $42,000, of which Ilenry I. Lewis is president, Maud H. Smith secretary and Frank E. Smith treasurer. Charles E. Smith, of Flying Point, is another large grower and dealer.
Stony Creek has a somewhat distinct community life. In 1874 it was made the second voting district of Branford, the territory included being about a mile and a half square. It has had, as noted, its own church for over half a century. Even its shore and summer places seem to be its own, and though there is no rivalry with the town which includes it, Stony Creek has a certain individuality. It is prosperous through certain highly developed industries. Little farming industry is included within its district now, most of that being of the market garden variety, to supply those who cannot farm for themselves, or the summer visitors. The latter make Stony Creek, for nearly six months of the year, a very busy place. The population of the hotels and cottages, the shore and the increasingly inhabited islands, makes use, in the season, of all the resources the village can supply.
From two directions terminating trolleys have had considerable effect on Stony Creek. The line from New llaven, now a part of the Connecticut Com- pany's system, came through Branford and to the eastern side of Stony Creek late in the 'nineties. This makes a very close connection with Branford, with all the shore places, with New Haven. It has helped not a little in Stony Creek's prosperity. From the other direction, the Shore Line Electric Railway Company built in 1910 a branch line from the center of Guilford by the shore route almost to Stony Creek village. It was the intention, or so it was announced, to have these lines connect, and make a continuous shore route from New Haven to Guilford, but the thing has never been done.
CHAPTER XXXVII
HAMDEN
TOWN OF MANY PARTS THAT ALMOST SURROUNDS NEW HAVEN, ANCIENT PLACE OF MANUFACTURES, MODERN SUBURBAN AND AGRICULTURAL TOWN
It is not true that from New Haven "all roads lead to Hamden," but the traveler who would not find it so must avoid at least four of the principal high- ways leading from the city, three of the street railway lines and one of the rail- roads. For that reason it seems to envelop New Haven, though that is mostly a seeming. Stretehing to the north, the northwest and somewhat to the north- east of the smaller town of New Haven is a long, broad, rambling town of thirty-two square miles. It is over eight miles from its southern to its northern point. In width at its broadest point it is six miles. Topographically it is oth- erwise peculiar. From its far northwestern corner, a point which seems to the New Havener unexplored territory, where the southwestern point of a height known in Cheshire as Mount Sanford jnts into the town, its boundary rambles now southwest and then southeast until it strikes the West Rock ridge, to which it adheres as a magnet to a piece of soft steel, until it comes upon Pine Rock, a modest height of 271 feet. Then, as if warned that it must not pass, it stops short, and leaves West Rock for New Haven.
At the northeast, it was ordained that Hamden should contain all of the Mount Carmel range- the boundary maker saw to that. Its eastern line shoots southeast until the Quinnipiac River stops it. Then, as if somebody had been too greedy, it turns repentantly and sharply west again. It hesitatingly meanders until it finds Mill River, when it seems to feel at home. For it follows the river in its course until it is lost in lower Lake Whitney. Perhaps, in the days before the inventive Yankee made dams to stop the water to turn his wheels, there was no lake there, If so, at that corner also the line was halted by a warning eminenee. For in the far southeastern corner of Hamden is Mill Rock, a 225-foot eminence that is a sort of advance guard of commanding East Rock -- and that also is left to New Haven.
All the way down through Hamden flows Mill River, giving it beauty and power. Mountains are its corner stones. All over it rise the everlasting hills. These also break it, in these days, into communities. Some of these the city has made. Following Dixwell Avenue, one finds closely built eity streets all the way, and knows not when he leaves the hounds of New Haven. But some differ-
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